The reforms Peter Allsopp and the teams he led in London and Basel instigated were set against the backdrop of rapidly changing financial markets.

In 2010, we are used to the idea of central bankers, regulators and market participants extolling the virtues of financial market infrastructure. But this was not the world that Peter faced in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The abolition of exchange controls in 1979 heralded moves to open up the clubby and cosseted world of the City of London. The